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Utopia Project Background

The Utopia project provides a framework for building Novell product and solution demos in a way that makes it easy to create, customize and share both live and recorded demos with Novell staff, partners, and customers, anywhere in the World.

After the initial launch of the project internally in September 2004, this demonstration framework has now evolved into a fully fledged demonstration environment that could be used by both the Novell internal technical communities and Partners, enabling them to demonstrate Novell technologies with minimum preparation time and consistent messaging.

The framework is based on VMware virtualization software. By following the standards described in this document you will be able to use demos supplied by Novell, and contribute back to the community in the form of new demos – by customizing the Novell-supplied demos or by creating new virtual machines of your own. The Utopia Demo System has been a benefit of PartnerNet membership since November 2006.

Scope of this Document

The scope of the document is to provide information on the conventions used when building the demonstration system and how to contribute back into the system. Following the standards for eDirectory design, server naming, IP Addressing, DNS etc will enable all Utopia demo systems to interoperate with each other, and make new demos easier to share with other community members.

Tools Used

VMware
VMware is virtualization software that allows for multiple virtual machines (VMs) to be created and run on one or more physical computers. This means that with you can run NetWare, Windows and Linux on a single machine simultaneously, enabling you to show cross platform demonstrations with minimum hardware investments.

We support the current version of VMware Workstation at all times. If for any reason we are unable to run Utopia on a future release of VMware Workstation that would be fully documented here. Until then you can be confident that our system will work with the latest versions of Workstation, as well as the free products VMware Player and Server.

It is also possible to convert VMware Workstation images for use on their Enterprise platform ESX Server. See VMware's website for details.

ViewletBuilder
ViewletBuilder Professional from Qarbon software is the tool chosen for the creation of recorded Utopia demos. With ViewletBuilder you can take any live demo and create an animated demo which can be published in Flash and replayed via any Web Browser. More information about ViewletBuilder is available at http://www.novell.com/partners/utopia, and Qarbon's Web site http://www.qarbon.com.

Conventions & Design Standards

The standards set out in this document allow demonstrations to be built quickly and to be interoperable with other vms. In all cases the vms are extracted onto a pre-configured VMware installation on a Linux or Windows host(s), in a variety of demo/proof of concept scenarios.

Tree/Workgroup Naming
Naming of eDirectory trees, Windows Active Directory trees, and/or workgroups follows this simple rule:

UTP, where represents any string the demo developer chooses. The developer will choose a string that describes the category of the demo, thus making the string unique in the system, and the "UTP" suffix denotes a Utopia demo as opposed to any other type.

For example, the developer of the Workgroup demo may well call his eDir tree WORKGROUPUTP, or possibly WKGUTP, and this would differ from the SRM tree which may be called SRMUTP or something similar.

eDir tree Structure
For the structure, the base of each category tree consists of 3 Organization objects (O=System, O=Utopia and O=DA). All the system specific objects (Admin, Servers and the server specific objects) reside in the O=System container and the Category specific objects for each demo system residing under the O=Utopia container. The DA container allows for the existing DigitalAirlines demo to be incorporated into the framework.

[Root] e.g ISMUTP

I
O=System

I_ Admin
I_ou=Servers

I_ Servers, LDAP, Cert,etc

I
O=Utopia

I_OU=users
I_ OU-Groups
I_ OU = <??????>

I
O=DA

[table goes here]

******************************************

IP Addresses

Server IP Addresses

Each category has a range of IP addresses reserved exclusively for its use. All systems are installed in the 172.17.2 network leaving the last octet for the host. This last octet has a range reserved for machines in a specific category (see example below). The reason for using this network is that it is more likely the least used non-routable network compared to the 192.168.x.x or the 10.1.x.x networks. It is important to remember this when configuring the VMWare network.

172.17.2.x address specifies that the first 3 octets are the network portion and x is the host portion with x being category specific as below:

1-40 – Free for use for the host or left free

41-50 reserved for OPS specific servers

51-70 reserved for SRM specific servers

71-90 reserved for Workgroup specific servers

91-110 reserved for ISM specific servers

111-130 reserved for special Projects

Example

172.17.2.65 would be a server in the SRM category

172.17.2.95 would be a server in the ISM category

The first server within the available IP address from each category has been configured as the DNS server for that category and if e-Dir is installed then this will also hold the master replica server.

172.17.2.51 – SRM DNS server / DS Master

172.17.2.71 – Workgroup DNS server / DS Master

172.17.2.91 – ISM DNS server / DS Master

Each category specific DNS server is configured to include a default public DNS server. (137.65.1.3). This will ensure name resolution for any requests outside of the framework's DNS servers.

Client IP Addresses

IP address range 172.17.2.<131-150> are reserved for generic clients configured for static IP addresses and the range 172.17.2.<151 – 200> for generic DHCP clients

Each client is to be configured with a default route of 172.17.2.2

DNS Configuration

Each category is installed in the same DNS domain, with the host name providing the unique piece of the machine's DNS name.

Some examples:

zcmutp.utopia.novell.com

idvaultutp.utopia.novell.com

namutp.utopia.novell.com

Each category has its own DNS server. This server may be referred to as the main or the primary server for that category. The primary DNS server in each category needs the capabilities to forward DNS requests to other primary servers in the framework prior to external name resolution. You should also configure this DNS server to resolve any of the following services, if used – NTP, DNS, DHCP, SLPDA, MAIL- MX or LDAP

VMware Requirements

Host OS

We support both SUSE Linux (SLES or SLED) and Windows (all versions supported by VMware) for hosting the Utopia demos.
VMWare must be configured to use the custom virtual network -- VMNET5

Guest OS

Each guest must use the VMNET5 network
The next obvious steps are to configure your Linux host(s) and begin utilizing the pre-built demos for your clients. To be able to do this proficiently you will need to have a good understanding of VMware networking (NAT versus Bridged) and the tools that are provided to make your working life easier, should you not be too comfortable with reconfiguring the network manually.

Configuration of VMware
Instructions for configuring VMware for Utopia can be found elsewhere in the Reference section. Just click the "Up" navigation link below and visit the VMware Configuration page.